The Biography of the Bible

of opportunity brought a rebirth of literature and art. By way of literature and art, its ancient friends, the Bible began to come back into its own.

A Biblical history, the Historia Scholastica, was written by Petrus Comestor for the use of scholars. For the unlettered was circulated the Biblia Pauperum, a kind of Biblical picture book showing famous scenes from the Bible. The greatest familiarity with the Bible, however, was to come through drama.

Modern drama, like the classical drama, developed out of religious liturgy. As early as the tenth century, the Benedictine nun, Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, had vaguely sensed the possibilities of religious drama, and in order to wean the nuns from reading the profane works of Plautus and Terence had written six Latin comedies with highly moral implications. But she was on the wrong track. The future lay not in imitation of the classics but in the use of elements much nearer at hand. The elaborate ceremonies of the medieval Church already possessed a wealth of dramatic material in the processionals, the changes of persons and costumes during the service, the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, the representations of the manger at Christmas and of the tomb at Easter.

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